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Offshore drilling? Alternative energy? Why choose?

Politics here in the US seems divided. Some politicians want to allow offshore drilling, while other politicians want to invest taxpayer money in alternative energy research. Personally, I believe alternative energy could be a while off from being cost effective for everything and I sure don't trust politicians to spend the money well.

On the other hand, offshore drilling will need to happen under some strict conditions to make sure the environment is well protected. Since conditions already need to be put in place, and considered by the oil companies when deciding whether or drilling for offshore oil is worth it, why not add in one more condition: for every barrel of oil recovered, invest $1 (or 1% of the price of a barrel of oil, whichever is less) in alternative energy research and production.

With an estimated 86 barrels of recoverable offshore oil, that is over $80 billion dollars invested in alternative energy and production. Considering that the competitors need to ship their oil to the US from halfway across the world, $1/barrel should be easily affordable.

This is a relatively small amount compared to the total economic value of the offshore oil fields, but enough money that the oil companies will make sure they get a good return on this investment. This would result in a better return on investment than politically spent money, as well as more money invested in alternative energy.

Surely this makes more sense than spending tax dollars on the alternative energy projects that are most interesting politically?

Comments

You said "With an estimated 86 barrels of recoverable offshore oil, that is over $80 billion dollars invested in alternative energy and production.".

According to the United States Energy Information Administration there are less than 21 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in the USA altogether. Is there any serious source that the 86 billion barrels offshore oil actually exist and are recoverable, or is this just a guess by someone that might or might not be true?

And even 86 billion barrels would equal only 13 years of US oil consumption...

If you only focus on how to produce energy you miss the best improvement:
Why not use less energy?

The USA use roughly twice as much energy per capita than e.g. Germany, and there's definitely no lack of energy in Germany.

Put $5 of taxes on each Gallon of gas (which would still be less taxation than in Germany) and you will not only have less energy usage (the market works fine in this respect) and money for alternative energy, but also part of the money required to pay for the expensive bank crashes and wars the US currently needs money for...

In order to use 50% less energy, the cities in the USA would need to be built very differently. People would need to live more concentrated in the same areas and along public transport corridors. Houses would also need to be built in a more energy efficient way. Some of this will no doubt happen slowly over time, but restructuring the country is not going to happen overnight.

An additional factor is that Europe and the US are only 1/5th of the world population. About half of the rest of the world, twice as many people as live in Europe and the US, are becoming richer and are getting a better standard of living. IMHO nobody can ask that the emerging middle class in developing countries give up their standard of living, now that things are finally improving for those 2 billion people.

That requires energy, so we need better ways of generating energy. If we can come up with a creative way to finance the development and deployment of alternative energy generation, it can benefit everyone.

There's a point called "peak oil" which represents the maximum rate of petroleum extraction.

For the oil extraction in the USA peak oil was in 1970 (sic) and the USA will never again produce as much oil as they did back then.

Whether the global peak oil is today or 20 years from now is disputed, but there will never be significantely more oil produced than today, and it will become increasingly harder to keep the status quo.

And the "slowly over time" regarding less energy usage might actually be in a comparable timeframe than your suggestion in this blog post - after all noone would seriously claim that the first drop of oil from the offshore fields that are currently discussed in the USA would be extracted during the next 10 years - and according to your suggestion money shouldn't be spent on alternative energy research before that happens.

But the positive effects of high gas prices on energy usage are already visible today in the USA when looking at how more reasonable cars are being bought instead of SUVs.